Showing posts with label Christopher Nolan interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christopher Nolan interview. Show all posts
A film isn’t finished till the audience tells me what they think-Christopher Nolan
3:37 PM
In an exclusive interview, Christopher Nolan talks about leaving his films open to interpretation
Natasha Coutinho (HINDUSTAN TIMES; July 15, 2026)
Oscar-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan arrived in Mumbai over the weekend for the first-ever India premiere of one of his films, The Odyssey. The director behind The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017) and Oppenheimer (2023) remains one of the few filmmakers whose name alone can turn a movie into a global cinematic event. Known for pairing ambitious storytelling with immersive big-screen spectacle, Nolan spoke exclusively to HT City during his visit about The Odyssey, audience interpretations and the enduring appeal of cinema. Excerpts:
Your films continue to spark debate and multiple interpretations years after their release. Has any interpretation ever surprised you?
(Laughs) The fun thing is that if you leave room for interpretation, you engage the audience more. It is also important that I don’t judge those interpretations. I accept the idea that I’m putting things out there for people to make their own. With The Odyssey, it is no different. I make films for the cinema audience. Thousands of people have worked on the film, but it isn’t finished until it goes out to the audience and they tell me what they think.
What was it like to see Interstellar find a new audience in India after its re-release?
It’s interesting to see how things emerge in culture, when a film first releases and then over time. With Interstellar, which was re-released in India not so long ago, it has been very interesting to see its relationship with the audience evolve. That’s pretty satisfying as a filmmaker.
At a time when short-form content dominates, how important are films that celebrate cinema in its truest form?
What I like about telling an adventure story and putting it on the biggest screens possible is that this generation of young filmgoers may not have seen a film made on this scale before.
I see young audiences engage with cinema in incredible ways. I look at the work of Curry Barker with Obsession and Kane Parsons with The Backrooms. With The Odyssey, I’m hoping to open cinema screens to a large-scale story and a style of filmmaking they may not be familiar with. We’ll see how that goes.
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Filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s bond with India goes back several years. He shot portions of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) in Jodhpur and Tenet (2020) in Mumbai. This visit marked a first of another kind: Nolan had never before travelled to the country to launch and promote one of his films.
You’ve said Indian audiences celebrate cinema. Any interesting visuals you observed this visit?
It was fun to be at the fan screening of The Odyssey in Mumbai, which is one of the first audiences in the world to see the film. Emma (Thomas, producer), Matt (Damon, actor), Tom (Holland, actor) and I came and said hi to the fans at the end. We took a selfie with the audience, and it was remarkable to see hundreds of them with their IMAX camera popcorn buckets.
You, too, are celebrated as one of the most loved international filmmakers in the country...
To have fans in India respond to my work is a great thrill and a huge honour.
This is not your first visit to India. How has your perception of the country evolved over the years?
I love coming here. I’ve had the privilege of working here a couple of times and engaging with local crews. Working in Mumbai, particularly on Tenet, was a wonderful experience.
While driving from the airport, I saw some of the locations and it brought back happy memories. It
was really nice to be back, but it was especially meaningful to return to launch and promote a new film. I’ve never had the chance to do that here, though I’ve wanted to for many years. It’s exciting to be premiering a film here in India.
There are commonalities in The Odyssey and the Mahabharata-Christopher Nolan
3:34 PM
Anshul Chaturvedi (BOMBAY TIMES; July 15, 2026)
Christopher Nolan is an avid consumer of fine Earl Grey tea. Christopher Nolan was relishing a very clearly non-Earl Grey chai with bun maska in Mumbai. Christopher Nolan’s films are so cerebral that they are interpreted and decoded and deciphered and analysed. Christopher Nolan’s film collections are as often bigger than those of the massiest, most dumbed-down cinema ever made.
There are many truths to Nolan’s persona and cinema that coexist simultaneously, and he is as layered a mind as the stories he tells.
And perhaps, The Odyssey is as layered a tale as he has ever told.
There is something about grand tales that delve into ethics, morality, philosophy and truths that transcend the barriers of both time and culture. It is on that account, perhaps, that our conversation in Mumbai with Nolan did not feel very ‘foreign’. The emphasis he places on the Greek concept of Xenia, of the thought that one should be respectful even to a humble beggar who comes at your door since he may be a god walking the earth in disguise, reminds one of Tulsidas’ ‘Na jaane kis vesh mein Narayan mil jaye’. The focus in his story on how a guest should be treated reminds us that ‘atithi devo bhava’ existed as a sacred thought across the world long before it became a tourism punchline. The stories of characters living on earth whose parents are gods, or at least non-human, reminds us of so many characters in the Mahabharata. The remorse that Nolan’s primary protagonist suffers even after engineering a famous victory reminds us of the name behind the Indian national emblem – how Asoka the Great’s remorse post-Kalinga shaped what he, and the land he ruled, have stood for a very, very long time.
“After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home” – when I hear Odysseus saying this, it made me think of another great Greek story, but one that is tied to India. Alexander The Great regarded Achilles as a role model. He carried a copy of the Iliad with him wherever he travelled. And some 850 years after Troy, Alexander’s troops, on the borders of India, rebelled and refused to go any further, and said, you know, like, nobody can come between us and home now. So, this universalness of the longing of a soldier to return home which cuts across cultures and across time, the diminishing thrill of conquest, these emotional contradictions of them both as brutal hardened warriors, and as sentimental individuals just wanting to finally get back home – as a filmmaker, how do you look at the psychology of such men, given that they are so conflicted in the two extremes?
I think it’s one of the eternal human contradictions. Love and war, essentially, that fuel drama and has fueled literature for thousands and thousands of years. I mean, the Odyssey is 3,000 years old, and I think it taps into very human truths.
I think that in my adaptation, I feel that – without going into spoilers, people haven’t seen it – but I think the character of Circe is given some things to say about that, and about that contradiction, that I think is very relevant to the overall story, because there is that contradiction of the qualities that make a good soldier.
Loyalty is one of them, loyalty and obedience and bravery and so forth, all these sorts of positive qualities – but aimed at this incredibly negative end, which is to inflict harm on somebody, to bring death and destruction, and so forth.
And that contradiction, I think, is one of the most interesting and evocative things that storytelling can deal with.
When I came to adapt the Odyssey, I found that that contradiction underlies everything really in the poem. And so, in different ways, I’ve tried to bring that out in the film, including the feel of the experience of the audience as well, in terms of what the audience’s relationship is with the adventure of the piece, but then also the gravity of the seriousness of war, of death, of destruction, all these things that are happening...
But I think it’s an eternal conflict that fuels drama in a very compelling way.
Is post-violence remorse the sign of an evolved soul, in your view, as opposed to people who relish it and enjoy it?
I mean, I think – even more complicated than that – I think within the same individual, there can be the element of remorse, there can (also) be element of inappropriate enjoyment of violence. Different attitudes towards violence at different times can exist within the same individual. And I think that’s one of the things that we’re dealing with, with the character of Odysseus, for example.
One of the reasons I wanted Matt Damon to play the part is, Matt, I mean, he’s a brilliant actor, that sort of goes without saying, but for me, even more than that, I wanted to retain the complexities and contradictions of the character of Odysseus, which are not the traditional characteristics of the hero of an epic.
And Matt is able to open that to the audience and bring the audience in, so you can retain those contradictions and complexities, but he can make you feel that you’re seeing the world through his eyes and you’re experiencing that with him.
And I think part of that is the idea of feeling grounded ethically in a character’s worldview, and then having that challenge, and especially retroactive, looking back at things you’ve already seen in the story, and maybe look at them in a slightly different way at the end of the film than we did at the beginning of the film. And that’s the kind of storytelling I very much enjoy.
You spoke about two things which intrigued me greatly. You talked about the epic being from a time when people saw divinity in everything — the thunder, the water, everything was from the gods. And you said that so many epics and modern stories come from the desire for us to believe that gods could walk amongst us. And in the story, you depict entities who are mortals on earth, but who are children of gods. These concepts are very familiar in Indian mythology and culture; the Mahabharata has so many stories of that nature. So my question is, in your filmmaking, the challenge or the goal often is to make the characters as ‘human’ and relatable as possible. But when you’re dealing with a god, there is no template. How do you approach the character of a god or a half god? How do you bring tears to his or her eyes?
Well, for me, you know, the film has something of a contradiction in this sense, because I have embraced the fantastical elements of the story, the creatures, for example, the cyclopses in the film, those things… But when it came to the gods and the portrayal of the gods, what I became interested in was something that you find in the poem.
It’s a Greek concept known as Xenia. In the film, we refer to it as Zeus’s law, very specifically, and it’s essentially the golden rule. It’s the idea that we have to treat each other with mutual respect.
And the theological underpinning in that Bronze Age is you may look like a humble beggar, but you might be a god in disguise. And so, I have to treat you the way I would want to be treated. In the modern world, we don’t necessarily have that theological underpinning, but of course, what I came to realize is it’s so essential for the story that modern civilization is founded on exactly the same principle, mutual respect.
But the fact that it’s a strong theological underpinning in the Bronze Age led me to want to portray the gods in the way that those people might have experienced them, through nature, through the evidence of the gods, that the sun rises in the morning, that the wind blows, that the tides come in. That’s all evidence of divinity. That’s evidence of gods.
And people walking amongst them may also be gods in disguise. They may be seeing gods in men. And I wanted to keep to that view of the gods, essentially, rather than portraying them as separate, in their own world, up on Mount Olympus or whatever, talking and so forth, as sometimes has been the case in older films.
I really wanted to stay within that mindset of the characters. I wanted to give it, because I think that idea of Xenia, that idea of Zeus’s law, by the end of the film, you realize how important that is. And I felt like portraying the gods in that way would make that more obvious.
Any Indian epic that would appeal to you tomorrow as a filmmaker, as a story?
I mean, I’m always interested in any great story. And I know that Indian culture is full of incredible great stories. But as far as the specifics of what attracts me to a project, I don’t know. I mean, there are commonalities in the Odyssey with, as you say, and the Mahabharata. But I have certainly enjoyed dealing in a mythological landscape, yes.
What is the finest work that you have seen of Indian cinema, in any space, directing, acting, music? Has anything held you?
I mean, I came very late to Satyajit Ray, Pather Panchali. It’s a masterpiece. It’s as good a film as I’ve ever seen. And I was, I did not realize, I think, how… obviously I’d heard of Ray, but some years ago, right before I came to India the first time, I watched that film for the first time, and it’s as fine a film as I’ve ever seen. He was an absolutely extraordinary filmmaker.
The moral centre that you wrote for Matt Damon’s character, like you explained, you know, that whole transition of hard and soft, conflicted, contradiction-filled – how different is that moral centre different from your own personal moral centre?
(Pauses) I think that’s a very tough question for this kind of interview! (laughs)
I mean, we’re all complicated… we’re all complicated the way that Odysseus is complicated… (but) I do not think the word that is most often applied to Odysseus, I don’t think people would necessarily apply that to me. And that word is wily. And, you know, it’s that idea of the trickster or somebody who’s always got – he’s hiding his motive, and has a sort of ulterior motive.
I don’t think, I don’t think I share that.
But even there, by the end of the story, you didn’t make him feel very proud of that. You made him go back and wonder whether it was the right thing to do.
Well, possibly because that’s how I would feel. This is… (laughs) Now I feel like I’m on the psychoanalyst couch!
But he’s not an apologetically wily character, is he? In your telling of it. He’s like somebody who’s been there and then is not so proud of it.
Yeah, I think so. But I also think that, you see, he’s aware of it, in a way, the whole film. But you still see him enjoying his intelligence and enjoying his way of working around things.
And so it’s that thing of somebody who knows what they should be doing and still perhaps isn’t doing it.
And, you know, we all share that.
(And as we wrap it up there, Nolan has a concluding take with a laugh: ‘That’s some tough questions!’ )
It is exciting for me that people go back and re watch my films to get them-Christopher Nolan
8:05 AM
Christopher Nolan understands that packing so much information in his films tends to get overwhelming for the audiences but adds, ‘hopefully, we put things there which people might notice in the second or third viewing’
Juhi Chakraborty (HINDUSTAN TIMES; December 12, 2020)
His cinematic style is distinct, with complicated narratives, often featuring the oscillation between different time frames — all this is the reason why Christopher Nolan has taken the modern day cinematic landscape by storm and earned a much deserved fan base. While his oeuvre is impressive, he credits it to his amazing team. The filmmaker, whose film Tenet released in India, understands that packing so much information in his films tend to get overwhelming for the audiences but adds, “hopefully, we put things there which people might notice in the second or third viewing.”
You shot portions of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) in Jodhpur and shot in Mumbai for Tenet. What brought you back to shoot in India?
I had a fantastic experience working with the local crew while shooting for The Dark Knight Rises. Then, I got an opportunity to come to Mumbai a few years ago, where we did a forum about future of cinema and I was struck by Mumbai and the look of the place, textural and architectural styles and the history in every angle of the city. As a filmmaker, it really excites your imagination and it left me wanting to come back with a camera and crew. I think the aerial view and the whole landscape that we added of the city in Tenet are one of the most fantastic visuals of the film.
Your films have complicated ideas. How challenging is it to adapt them for celluloid and make them simple for the audiences?
The process for me is a lot of time. I do a lot of diagrams. I need to know what the genre is. In Tenet, the important part was looking at the spy film genre, looking at the James Bond films I grew up watching. I thought to myself, ‘okay, how can I use the genre, and how can it help me take the audience on this journey’.
A Nolan film typically means one watch is never enough and people have to go back again and again to join the dots…
For me, it is very exciting that people go back and re-watch my films again and again to get them. As long as I have done my job of giving the first time viewer an exciting and entraining experience, I am happy. If I can’t entertain people the first time around, then I don’t think they’ll be interested in coming back. I take years to work on the stuff and I have a lot of people helping me do it. There are a lot of ideas that go into my films and the audience has only two-and-half hours to take away. Hopefully, we put things there which people might notice in the second or third viewing.
The casting in your films continues to be intriguing. How do you zero down on your cast?
I try to not write with actors in mind as that would be limiting for actors. I try to write the character on page and don’t let real actors be a factor. When I finish the script, I have this amazing moment of looking at the performances of so many talented actors and think about what this actor could bring. Be it John David Washington, Dimple Kapadia, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, these are all people I knew would take what I had written and make it so much more real.
You did a cohesive and successful job with the Batman franchise. Would you go back to directing superhero films?
I don’t think so. It was a privilege to work with that character but it was 10 years of my life. I have other types of stories to tell as filmmaker.
I feel people’s desire to watch films on the big screen is undiminished-Christopher Nolan
8:03 AM
Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; December 12, 2020)
If it isn’t complex, it isn’t Nolan. Will we ever see you making a non mind-bending, uncomplicated film?
I like to do things that use convention to give the audience a certain jumping-off point. For instance (in Tenet), I have taken a spy film and the audience is familiar with that genre. There are conventions to that, but I take those for granted and use those to take the audience somewhere different, somewhere more complicated or somewhere they haven’t been before. That’s my ambition for whatever genre I am working on.
“You have to see Christopher Nolan’s films at least three times to understand what he is trying to say.” How would you respond to this popular opinion or observation of your work?
I make mainstream films for a wide audience. Hopefully, they enjoy that. I think having some complexities in the story, something potentially confusing, that’s the fun of filmmaking. I like to pull people in a slightly different direction than they are familiar with. You’ve got to remember that I have had years and years to think about and craft these films with a great team working on it. The audience only has two-and-a-half hours to take it away, so inevitably there’s a density to it. There will be things that people miss the first time around that they get to see the second time if they are interested. I am happy if people want to revisit my work. If there are questions left at the end of the movie that make them want to rewatch it, that’s a wonderful thing for a filmmaker. But at the same time, a film has to be inspiring and exciting the first time you see it. It has to take you some place and give you a reason to think about it more or see it again with friends.
One cannot hold back from asking you about your fascination with time. Be it Memento, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and now Tenet. What draws you towards time the most?
I am fascinated with time because I have always lived in it like the rest of us. What I have learned over the years while exploring stories is that there’s a very unique relationship between time and cinema. My friend, visual artist Tacita Dean, said something profound during a presentation in Mumbai a few years ago. I was seated in the audience. She said, “The camera sees time.” I thought about it when I was writing Tenet and it struck a chord with me. It’s true. Before the film camera, humans had no way of seeing time differently… running something backwards, fast forward or slow motion. The birth of cinema itself lets us examine time in a way that we couldn’t before. This is why I feel time is the most cinematic subject.
In what has been a huge loss to cinema, one of Indian cinema’s finest actors, Irrfan Khan, passed away this year. You were keen on having him on board for Interstellar, but that didn’t materialise. He told Bombay Times in August 2013 that while he doesn’t have the tendency to regret what he does, not being able to work with you was one.
Yes, I did meet Irrfan for Interstellar. I was looking forward to working with him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to do the film. He was a great actor.
Dimple Kapadia told us that she was sure she won’t get a part in Tenet, but the only reason she auditioned for it was to get a picture with you.
(Laughs!) Dimple is extremely self-deprecating. She is an actress of supreme poise and elegance. As soon as we met, we felt a connection. What I was looking for in Priya (Dimple’s character in the film) was hidden depth, elegant façade and a layered personality. She was able to project that. She gives you the shift you are looking for in her character. In our first meeting, I just put a camera on her and we tried to do a scene in different ways to project different psychology of her character. That’s what I look for in an actor as a director. She is the whole package. There’s so much charisma.
You have been to Mumbai twice. You shot portions of Tenet in the city. As a director whose work takes him across the globe, what intrigued you about Mumbai the most?
Mumbai has a mixture of different architectural forms — old colonial, Gothic to modern and an exciting skyline. The scale, density of the city and number of people living there... Mumbai is vibrant, unique and extremely striking. For a filmmaker who hasn’t been there before, to see it all with fresh eyes, you try to take it all in and capture it on camera as much as possible. Having seen the city from the ground, I wanted to take some aerial helicopter shots of the skyline. I was able to do that and that was a unique opportunity. The Mumbai shots speak for themselves. They are one of the grandest scenes in Tenet and we have shot all over the world.
You have always been a huge supporter of the big screen. The pandemic has affected the theatre business globally. Do you see them bouncing back anytime soon?
People will always love the feeling of coming together to watch a great story. The pandemic has made us unable to do that for some time, but in the long term, it’s something that you will always want to do. This phase has been very hard on exhibitors and people working in theatres. But I feel people’s desire to watch films on the big screen is undiminished. People are hungry to get back to the theatres when it’s safe to do so. In the long run, I feel very optimistic about the future of films.
We may live in a digital age, but we live in an analogue world-Christopher Nolan
8:14 AM
An interaction with the filmmaker, who is revered by cinephiles across the globe. Christopher Nolan talks about cinema, celluloid and his choices in filmmaking
Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; April 2, 2018)
Chris Chris, Nolan Nolan… diehard fans chanted this slogan in unison, (an ode to his Dark Knight trilogy) at the special Mumbai screening of Dunkirk (in IMAX 70 mm) on Saturday. As the sounds echoed in the theatre, the much-acclaimed director remained calm and collected. He playfully pointed out that the screening got sold out also because ‘it is a good film’.
The British filmmaker Nolan loosely reminds you of a more casual version of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock in Phantom Thread — a genius singularly focused on his job, avoiding any sort of distraction. You can sense his simmering impatience underneath a Zen-like exterior. Stalwarts like Kamal Haasan, Shah Rukh Khan, A R Rahman and Rajkumar Hirani all thronged to meet the filmmaker and that just speaks volumes about his popularity in India.
Nolan’s extreme focus in times of digital clutter is noteworthy and perhaps explains why he doesn’t use a cell phone even today. Films like Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight trilogy and the latest Dunkirk, are just a reflection of his passion for the craft and his ability to bring an uncanny psychological depth to the stories he tells. He awed the audience during his first press interaction in India, held in Mumbai for film preservation and restoration, a common cause supported by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, filmmaker and founder of the Film Heritage Foundation.
Nolan has been a strong advocate of celluloid along with filmmaking giants like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, JJ Abrams, to name a few.
While sipping on his must have (Earl Grey) tea at regular intervals, he explains why the choice of shooting on film should be made available to filmmakers. Whether they then choose analogue or digital depends on how they want to tell their story but they cannot be denied the right to choose. Excerpts from an insightful conversation...
You don’t use a cell phone or even an email. Will we see that changing since we live in a digital age and social media is big, today?
This way I don’t have to worry about my Facebook data (smiles). I am not interested in that side of life actually. We may live in a digital age, but we live in an analogue world. One of the things we all love about celluloid film is that it’s a very good analogy for, the way I see it, having a relationship with real life. Digital doesn’t have that. So analogue remains a powerful storytelling tool. I don’t have a cell phone but I don’t think that is relevant to my choice of medium, they are two different questions. One of the problems with digital semantics, which Tacita (Dean) and I talked about a lot, is that the word digital is essentially meaningless at this point in our culture. What does that even mean? It’s used to describe everything, and everything uses digital technology. My films use massive amounts of digital technology. Tacita in her presentation yesterday, talked about how she uses digital technology to make the masks that go into her camera, that then allows her to do multiple exposures on celluloid films. We all use digital in this and in that, but it doesn’t really mean anything.
Not everyone who watches movies might have the ability to tell the difference between film and digital format. How would you explain this to a common man?
Well, this question is always asked in an invalid way because you ask people to quantify something that they are not technically knowledgeable enough to quantify. The point isn’t that you can or cannot tell the difference between film print and digital. The point is what do you enjoy watching? Those of us who work in the filmmaking profession see different formats every day, most of the people I talk to fully understand it. You just enjoy watching a film print more. It’s more emotionally involving, fun to watch, immersive and nicer to look at. So trying to apply rigorous technical logic to it is beside the point. That thought is often used by people promoting digital technology, they say that people can’t really tell the difference.
Quentin Tarantino said in an interview that, “If I can’t shoot on film, I will stop making movies.” He even described the digital projection at Cannes as the ‘death of cinema’. Do you share that sentiment?
It’s more important for me to present myself as a practical filmmaker, more than what I think, Quentin cares about. But the reality is, he told me the very same thing several years ago and when I heard it, I realised that it would be very difficult for me as well, to muster any enthusiasm for getting up early in the morning and going to work if there wasn’t a real film camera on the set.
You are considered to be a traditionalist who continues to support film as an art form, while your movies are quite futuristic. How do you deal with the two contrasting thought processes?
I am not alone in this endeavour. There are various allies and tremendous filmmakers who love to shoot on film. Film is a medium. It’s a way of telling a story. You can use it for whatever you want it for. For example, in Dunkirk we tried to tell a story in an ambitious and different way using interesting structural techniques, so that’s also relevant. Traditionalist in terms of working methodology? To me that is a technical question, it’s not an artistic question.
Steven Spielberg made a political statement through his movie The Post. Do you also feel the need to do the same in the Donald Trump era, since you are also a powerful filmmaker in Hollywood?
No, I am more instinctive in my choices. I just make a story that grabs me.
How familiar are you with Indian cinema?
I have watched some Indian films, not enough though. I have enjoyed whatever I have seen. I intend to watch and discover more. This was part of the reason why I wanted to come here. I wanted to meet people from the Indian film industry, which is one of the biggest film cultures in the world and I am excited for it. We were in India before, very briefly to shoot The Dark Knight Rises and it’s exciting to be back and to be able to spend more time here.
Shooting on film isn’t crazy, it’s a filmmaker’s creative right-Christopher Nolan
9:04 AM
‘People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy,’ said Bruce Wayne before he turned Batman. And just like his caped superhero, Christopher Nolan swooped down on Mumbai to dispel the dark clouds looming over celluloid. In an exclusive chat with Mohua Das, the filmmaker, who has been crusading to save film in the time of digital, spoke about going against industry trends and reconciling the past with the future
Mohua Das (THE TIMES OF INDIA; April 1, 2018)
Why was it important for you to make India your next destination after Los Angeles, London and Mexico in your crusade to bring back celluloid?
India has the largest film industry in the world. People care about movies here more than anywhere else. In this conversation we’ve been having to promote the use of film, India has to be a very, very important part, if this movement has to take root. And I will say that I think this is the most enthusiastic response we’ve had.
You’ve shot Dunkirk on film, and there is also Quentin Tarantino who uses analog. But India is yet to see the analog resurgence that Hollywood is witnessing. Were there certain fears or myths that surfaced from your roundtable with the Indian film fraternity?
A lot of the point of these events is to dispel myths. We’ve spent the last few years patiently explaining that film is here to stay, that it’s a wonderful medium. There’s a myth that the infrastructure to shoot on film has disappeared. But you drill down on that a bit and ask where has it gone? Did it vapourise? It was here just a few years ago. Our message is to try and give filmmakers a vocabulary and the power that if they feel they can ask to shoot on film. That it’s not inappropriate in today’s day and age. It’s an artistic choice.
Make it, go for it and insist on it if that is what you want. People like Tacita (Dean, visual artist and ally in his film campaign) who is a very established artist and myself, a very established filmmaker — we have the power to insist on what we want and we try to spread that around, and encourage other people to do that. It doesn’t seem like an irresponsible choice or a crazy thing to say. We’re asserting a basic creative right. And we try to normalise that dialogue because no one really dares to tell Tacita whether to paint in watercolour or oil and they shouldn’t be telling a filmmaker whether they should shoot on film. That should be the creative person’s choice. We have to get rid of this notion that digital is a pragmatic or responsible choice. Films aren’t about pragmatism. They’re about dreams and storytelling. We need to be free to express ourselves in whatever way is most exciting.
You’ve championed film against industry trends. How do you marry creative license with commercial constraints? Do you have to struggle to convince the studios each time or does being a brand name help?
It’s gotten easier for me over the years. But the truth is, making any film in any way is extremely difficult, particularly when you’re starting out. There are all kind of hurdles you have to overcome and so shooting on film is just a part of that. If it’s the right thing to do for a project, then it’s worth fighting for. It’s too fundamental to why you want to be a filmmaker as opposed to a TV show maker or a painter. My narrative features the moving image and the way I shoot that image is its fundamental essence. I won’t compromise on it. But the idea that, ‘oh, I have the power to do it, therefore, I can do it and that makes a special case’ is not valid.
Truth is, what I’m doing with my films is something anybody could be doing and there are very small filmmakers working on celluloid. Like Sean Baker who made The Florida Project. Very inexpensive, and working on another end of the spectrum. Film is timeless, and there to be used for storytelling.
You’ve said in the past that you like to use the best technology and look at the future. At the same time you’re passionate about the aesthetic and historical possibilities of a form past its heyday. How do you reconcile the past with the future? Is this a way of life for you?
It’s definitely a way of life, and my point is the timelessness of the medium. It’s like clay. When you sculpt from clay, it doesn’t have a heyday. It just is! It effortlessly reconciles the past with the present and future. It’s a medium that can be used in any way you want, forever. That’s what film is. It’s got 100 years of history.
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